When Science and Magic Collide
by Cosette 24601
Summary: Two scientists got more than they asked for from the Large Hadron Collider. Instead of particles colliding, their world and Narnia has. And they just can't accept that magic is real. There must be a scientific explanation for this!
1. World Collision

**This is probably going to end up one of the most (if not the most) geeky Narnian fanfics. Yay for geekiness! Feel free to ask me about any of the science references here! And please, correct me if something is incorrect. There's a few subjects I only know the basic ideas of. And if you have an interesting ideas or funny jokes that could work, I'd love to hear them! **

**Thank you ResOmnesBeneFacere for suggesting using the Large Hadron Collider! **

Within the past few weeks, everything I knew has changed. And by changed, I mean science was my everything and somehow, science no longer seems to be able to explain what the hell is going on. Part of me is intrigued, but I mostly want to return to a world where everything makes sense. Where it's easy for me to understand. Like doing rocket science. Or quantum mechanics. Ahh, to be doing some easy multivariable calculus would be a nice relief. Anything but this magic, relgiousy voodoo that is Narnia.

It all started when I was interning in Cern in Switzerland over the summer, working on the Large Hadron Collider. It was honestly a dream come true. If science is a religion, than the LHC is the tabernacle. Or the altar. I'm not really sure what either of those are. I've never had time to bother with religion. Not sure why I'm bothering with metaphors either. I'm clearly no poet. But I digress.

I knew I wasn't supposed to be handling the Large Hadron Collider by myself. But… I had been here for weeks and all they had me doing was boring algorithms on a computer and paperwork. I just had to get a closer look!

So I snuck out. All I wanted was to see it up close I swear! I didn't intend for anything bad to happen! You know, maybe knocking stuff over wasn't my fault. I mean, if you subscribe to the idea of determinism rather than free will. Then I couldn't really help any of this now could I?

But anyways, regardless of whether determinism meant that the conditions could cause no other event or whether I'm just ridiculously clumsy, I managed to knock over an entire shelf somehow, which then let of a chain reaction of assorted objects falling like dominos.

"What the hell?" a voice with a slight accent called, entering. I glanced and vaguely recognized the person as another intern. His eyes suddenly grew wide as he noticed something behind me. I spun a 180 and saw that something had hit the LHC! We both ran over which in retrospect was probably the most foolish move we could have made. It was activated and warming up.

I can't fully remember what happened. Which even though my brain may have intentionally suppressed those memories still bothers me. I mean, I have knowledge somewhere inside of me of an experience none but the other intern and me have experienced! But the next thing I remember is waking to find crystalline water ice precipitating on my face. Okay, I mean that it was snowing. But crystalline water ice sounds so much more interesting, doesn't it? No?... Well then…

"¿Qué pasó?" the other intern who was next to me groaned, rubbing his head.

"I… I don't know," I admitted, hating to admit there was something I didn't know. But there was absolutely no scientific explanation for such an occurrence. Although I suppose we have to assume that anything that can happen will happen, right? Except I wasn't entirely convinced that this was something that _could_ happen…

"Huh… this is the first time I've ever seen snow," he commented.

"_What?_" I exclaimed. Although that was much easier to believe that anything else I had heard.

He shrugged. "It doesn't even really rain much where I live in California. So this is new to me. Anyways, I'm José. And you, chica?"

"I'm Ada. Named for Ada Lovelace," I said, shaking his hand.

"With being named after a woman like that, not surprising you'd be interning at Cern," he commented. "Let's go see if we can find anyone else here who can tell us where on Earth we are."

I'm fairly sure he had meant that statement figuratively, but it was rather ironic once we figured out we weren't from Earth. "Alright. I'm still having trouble accepting any of this."

"Alright… which way? And do you think we ought to walk quickly or slowly?" I mused.

"I dunno. The more I know about our momentum, the less I know about our position and vice versa," he joked.

"Ah, quantum physics. So beautiful. And so much less confusing than whatever _this_ is," I said, picking a random direction and heading off.

After a little while, he suddenly said, "Does something seem strange about the trees?"

I glanced at the trees and said, "I'm not a botanist."

"Neither am I… and there honestly aren't even that many trees where I live. But still. Does something just feel… pues… off about them?"

"I don't deal in _feelings_," I pointed out. "If there's something off about them, then I want to see evidence."

His eyes suddenly widened as he said, "Does that tree literally moving count as evidence?"

"It's just the wind – holy cow!" I shouted. The _roots_ of the tree were out of the ground as it waddled over to…_chat?! _… with another. "How… what?!"

We both stared in horrified awe for several minutes.

"Wait," I said, snapping my fingers. "I've figured it out."

"That there's something magical involved?" he said dubiously.

"Don't be ridiculous! Magic doesn't exist. It's clearly somehow we managed to end up in a different quantum universe. Y'know, like the multiverse theory? And in this one, somehow evolution patterns created…. that."

"It's…. possible," he mused. "I wonder what evolutionary track that would be. Do you think we should try to talk with them?"

"Let's go," I decided, my curiosity getting the best of me. And maybe if they dropped some twigs or something I could steal them to experiment on and try to understand this better.

But on the way, we heard more rustling in the trees.

"W-What do you think that is?" I said nervously.

"Dunno. In this… universe, anything," he said.

Suddenly, a half-goat, half-man creature sprung out of the woods. José and I screamed, not knowing what the hell was going on. The goaty man screamed too, as though terrified by us. Which I wasn't too surprised by since when I saw him I guessed that this may be a divergent path in this universe where these creatures evolved instead of humans. Although I had no clue what may have factored into that.

"A satyr. Or faun," José said incredulously as the creature hid from us in the trees.

"A what?" I frowned.

"From Greek and Roman mythology?" he prompted, but nothing came to mind. I never really cared for mythology much.

"But then how would people of our universe know of something that exists in a parallel universe?" I frowned.

"Dunno. Let's say hi," he said, walking forward. "Hello?"

When the satyr or faun or whatever didn't respond, José then tried, "¿Hola?"

He turned back to me with a shrug and said, "That's all the languages I know."

"I… I speak this language," the goatman/faun/satyr said hesitantly. "What… what are you?"

"We call ourselves humans," I supplied. I assumed that humans must not exist in this parallel world, so I was surprised to see him act terrified.

"Humans? In Narnia? Oh, dear. More of you?" he fretted.

"Um…"

"You've met other humans?"

"Well, I ahh, that is to say… We should speak elsewhere," he fretted. "Come to my house."

We exchanged glances. José shrugged, leaning in and whispering, "Two of us against him. And we'll catch hypothermia out here. I swear, it feels like its cold enough for the nitrogen in the air to turn liquid."

"You've seriously never experienced cold weather before have you?" I grumbled, knowing there was no way it was anywhere close to 77.2 Kelvin out here. But José had a point. Neither of us where dressed for snow, me in my "May the F = ma be with you" tank-top with short denim shorts and him in a T-shirt advertising some Chican activist group and jeans. "Let's go."

The faun motioned for us to follow him. Soon we came upon his rather cozy-looking home/cave thingie. It seemed a bit primitive, but at the same time the architecture seemed very cost-productive and well-built.

"My name is Tumnus," he introduced.

"José," José said, offering his hand.

"Ah, so you do the shake hands too?" he asked, shaking Josés hand in an odd manner. He then turned to me.

"Ada," I said, shaking his hand and trying to keep his hand from turning it into the same wild handshake he did with José.

While the faun went to prepare some tea, José picked up a book, "_Is Man a Myth_? What kind of book is that?"

"So… our mythology is their reality, and our reality is there mythology. There's only one explanation for this," I concluded.

"You actually made sense of this?" he asked, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

"Yeah. This is all a hallucination or something someone created with augmented reality," I said.

"Then augmented reality has progressed in leaps and bounds to make something _this _real. And why would anyone do that anyways?" he frowned.

"Tea?" Tumnus offered.

"Thanks," we both said.

"So, Narnia? What is it?"

The faun launched into an explanation of the country. He then hesitantly told us about a White Witch – which made José mutter "reverse racism much?" under his breath – and how there was a prophecy about humans defeating her.

"So, the world here is deterministic and we know details like that here?" I commented. The faun merely gave me a blank stare.

"Wait, so do humans exist here or not?" José interceded, giving me a look.

"Well… I… Just the other day, I met this young girl named Lucy," he said. He told us how he had met her and that she had three siblings, the number of children in the prophecy. I was rather relieved that no one was going to try to make me support a dictatorship of any sort.

"So… where is this Lucy now?" I asked dubiously. I highly doubted she was literally from another world. Maybe another galaxy and there was somehow a wormhole between where she lived and here? Sounded more like a sci-fi novel than actual reality.

"She returned to her own world. I- I can bring you there," he offered nervously. "We'll have to be furtive though. If the Witch should find out that there are more humans here!"

He didn't finish his thought but I got the idea. I was intrigued by the idea of a possible wormhole and nodded eagerly. José seemed more reluctant, but then he nodded too.

"Kinda wanted to help overthrow a tyrant and install a democratic republic here," he muttered. I rolled my eyes.

Soon we were at a lamppost. "She walked through that brush right there to return to her city of War Drobe in Spare Oom," he said.

I suddenly was perturbed. Those didn't sound like names of places in any country I've ever heard of. More like something a silly child might make up. Nonetheless, my curiosity got the best of me so I went to go through it, José right behind me. Soon branches turned to .. fur?

"What the hell?" I said. This made even less sense than anything else had so far. I racked my brain. Nope. No explanations came to mind. A nagging voice in the back of my head suggested magic. I shoved that voice aside, refusing to believe in magic one bit. But nothing about this suggested a wormhole or anything that might be a stretch in science.

Soon it was all coats and almost pitch black. I felt something hard in front of me and pushed through a … a door? And soon we were what looked like a perfectly normal spare room.

It felt weird that I was saying it now that we were out of fantasy land, but I couldn't help saying, "Impossible…"


	2. Wardrobe Wormhole Duality

I freaked out when the door to the room this wardrobe was in creaked open. Then I felt a little stupid when a little girl walked in, covered in a pink robe and probably about half my age if even that.

"Who are you?" she asked cheerfully.

"Umm….." How exactly do we explain this? I decided for diverting attention. "And just what are you doing in this room so late at night?"

"I…I wanted to go in the wardrobe," she said shyly.

José and I glanced at each other. Did she know what was going on any more than we did?

"Lucy…" a voice started calling.

"Edmund!" she said, startled.

"Pretending Narnia exists again?" he sneered as a young boy rounded the corner. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

"Wait, you know about Narnia too?" José asked Lucy.

"You've been there?" she said eagerly.

"We… we just got out of there. But I don't understand how it exists," I said.

Her eyes lit up. "I need to tell Peter and Susan it's real!"

As she ran out, I tried calling her back, worried Peter and Susan might be adults who would commit us to an insane asylum. Well, even if they did, it's still possible to get a Nobel Prize and be remembered a genius. Just like John Nash. But still, rather not. The going to a psychiatric hospital part I mean. I would love the Nobel Prize and genius part of course.

Soon Lucy ran in. I was relieved that they were only a bit older than Lucy and Edmund.

"What's going on?" Peter said, rubbing his eyes as though he just got out of REM sleep.

"Who are you?" the girl demanded, pulling Edmund back so he was closer to her.

"I'm José."

"Um, I'm Ada," I said.

"And Lucy says you're from Narnia?" Peter said, sounding like he really didn't believe it at all.

"Well, we were in Switzerland, near Geneva," José began.

"Switzerland?" Susan said doubtfully. "Well, that's not so unusual. But how were you able to travel so easily with the war and all?"

"What war?"

"The Germans? How could you miss all of that?" Peter said incredulously.

"There hasn't been war in Germany since the Second World War," José said. I figured there wasn't, but my history was rubbish. I think Second World War was the Nazi one? "Back in the 1940s…"

"It _is_ 1940," both Peter and Susan said.

"What?!"

"What year do you think it was?" Susan said, crossing her arms and pursing her lips like an stern schoolteacher.

"2014," I said.

"Really? Who wins the war?" Peter said eagerly. Susan frowned and smacked his upside the head lightly.

"War isn't something that can be won. Everyone loses in war, but some more than others," José said.

"That was deep," I scoffed.

"It's true!" he protested.

"Anyways, pretty sure the Germans lose bad," I said offhandedly. "But this makes no sense. Time travel just plain doesn't exist. We weren't anywhere near relativistic speeds, and even if we were, that would only mean that time is relative and would pass less for us than for others. So, we'd still be moving forward in time, just less of it than others."

"That makes no sense," Susan said with a frown.

"That's relativity for ya," José joked. "Technically we could travel backwards in time if we exceeded the speed of light."

"Which is impossible."

"Well, there were those neutrinos at CERN three years ago," he joked. I laughed along with him. The four kids gave us rather blank, uncomprehending stares.

"The joke is that the scientists just messed up. A fiber optic cable wasn't properly attached and the clock oscillator was malfunctioning."

And yet they still seem unamused. I sighed.

"So the frickin point is, time travel is impossible," I concluded exasperatedly.

"And yet here we are," José pointed out. "So… time to reevaluate our concept of 'impossible'."

"Anyways, how did you get here?" Susan said. "Please don't tell me it was – "

"– Through the wardrobe," everyone said at the same time.

"But there was nothing at the back of the wardrobe when we looked! How could something sometimes work and other times not work?" Susan said in frustration. Believe me, girlfriend, I'm feeling that same frustration too.

"Just like an electron," José said suddenly. "If you watch it, it no longer acts like a wave, but as you would expect it to as a particle. When you're looking for Narnia, the wardrobe starts acting like a normal wardrobe as you'd expect it to. "

"Whatever are you talking about?" Susan said, sounding vaguely annoyed.

"A wardrobe isn't quantum," I retorted, rolling my eyes. "Way too huge."

"Still, the same concept could apply I suppose," he said hesitantly. "If we're actually looking for the… the… wormhole? Portal? I'm not sure what to call it. But if we're looking for it, it's not there. But when we stumble across it, it works. Maybe. Or I might be just talking nonsense."

"Or you might be definitely talking nonsense," Susan muttered under her breath.

Suddenly we heard footsteps.

"The Macready," the four children suddenly said.

"What?"

"The housekeeper. She'll be furious," Susan explained.

"We could hide in here," Edmund pointed out. I really didn't want to, but a housekeeper – especially one that terrified these kids so – might just call the insane asylum. Or worse, police. Peter and Susan also seemed hesitant to go in there, but they did. Soon we were all in the wardrobe. How friken ridiculous. I'm an adult (okay, still crippled by student loans) with a thriving career (well, sure it only just started, but hey, I worked at CERN) and I'm crouching in a crowded wardrobe with a bunch of kids who think it's the 1940s (the only possible explanation since time travel is not real!). And the kids don't even know science. I mean, come on. De Broglie was 1920s. So they should know wave-particle duality.

Suddenly, it grew cold again. Great. How the hell were we back in Narnia? The scientific impossibility of this was so great that I didn't even know what questions to begin asking.

Unsurprisingly, the three kids who hadn't been to Narnia were all shocked and apologized to the little girl. Then suddenly it ended up in a mad snowball fight somehow. I got bored, so I started drawing fractals in the snow to amuse myself.

"Pretty," José commented. I looked over and noticed he had written "Heisenburg might have been here" in the snow. I snorted. Then I noticed he had written a lot of stuff, mostly equations and such. Then something in a language I didn't recognize.

"El hielo anda suelto por esas calles?" I asked, probably messing up most of the words.

"The ice is … let's say loose. Over these streets," he responded. "Rough translation. Sounds better in Spanish."

"Fits," I commented.

"It's actually not about like icy ice at all but I thought it kinda fit. And if the ice is from an evil source like the faun said, all the better a fit since the ICE this song lyric refers to is evil," he said.

"Evil ice?" I said dubiously.

"Acronym," he responded. "Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Because of them I haven't seen my uncle since they sent him away when his son had only just been born."

"Oh…" I said awkwardly. Emotions and political stuff. I really couldn't deal with this. Since both were not science. Or since neither was science? Were science? Whatever. Grammar's not science either so also don't care.

"Are you coming?" Peter called. Apparently they had finished their snow fight and were headed somewhere.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Some friend of Lu's," Peter said.

"Mr. Tumnus," she said happily.

"Nah, been there done that. We'll go exploring somewhere else. I'd rather not go back to the one and only place I've been too," I said.

José shrugged. "Well, I guess I'll go with Ada then."

"And you really ought to go with your sister," Susan admonished.

"Wait, what? Do we even look like remotely like siblings?" José said dubiously.

"Do we?" Peter said cynically. "And yet we are."

"Wait, really?" I said. At least they were all the same race though. So it was certainly plausible although I would not have guessed it.

"Yes," Susan said.

And on that nonsensical note, we parted paths.

After wandering awhile, a lady dressed all in white showed up. Her skin was the palest thing I've ever seen, so now I get why she's called the White Witch. And she had to be the Witch. Looking at her terrified me more than the fact that there are people who don't believe in vaccinations.

"Are you the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve?" she said, sounding furious and holding something. A wand maybe?

"Well… I'm someone's son. My dad's name is Ricardo though, not Adam. And she's someone's daughter, but how could we be multiple sons and daughters?" José said cynically. I smirked.

The Witch and her dwarf just seemed kind of confused.

"How many are there of you?" she said. "Have you any other siblings?"

"Really? Why does everyone keep thinking we're related today? We only just met each other?" José protested.

"Oh," the Witch said, seeming relieved. She suddenly seemed to be trying to turn on the charm. "Well… how about you come sit with me? You must be _awful_ cold there."

José looked like he might agree. Oh, right. Mister Never Seen Snow Before.

"We're not cold at all," I said, poking him in his side pointedly.

. "We were actually just on our way… over thataway."

"I accidently left my scarf there earlier so we're going to pick it up," I lied. Seriously José? The best he could come up with was "thataway"?

"But it can wait a bit longer, can't it," she said, a note of frustration under her pretty words. "Perhaps something to eat? Or drink?"

Awkward silence. No… didn't really want food from someone we had heard was a Witch. Not that I accepted magic was real. But it would be very easy to pretend to be a Witch by using chemistry to poison people with.

"I could go for some Turkish Delight," I said hesitantly. Not that I really wanted any. I just went for the first thing I could think of that I doubted the Witch would have.

"What's that?" José said.

"You've never had Turkish Delight?" I said.

"Nope. Hey do you have any good Mexican food? Been missing it so much while in Switzerland. I would even settle for a chimichanga, which is so not legit Mexican food," he said eagerly.

"I… I am afraid I am not familiar with chim- chi… that food you mentioned. Or Mexican food," the Witch said, confused. So was I quite frankly. "But Turkish Delight. Now _that_ I can do."

"Drat. I would kill for a decent tamale," he muttered. The Witch pulled out a dropper and made a platter of Turkish Delight appear out of the show.

"How is that possible?" I said incredulously.

"Who knew alchemy was legit?" José commented.

"Will you stop saying legit so much?" I said irritably. Although it was mainly misguided anger that made me lash out since I couldn't exactly get mad at science for seeming to be not working. I pulled up all the mental chemistry files I had. Nope. Nope. Nope. None of it made any sense of this craziness. Fantastic.

"Please, eat," the Witch offered. Crap. I couldn't exactly refuse seeing as I had technically asked for it, but that was most to see what she was going to do and because I thought she _wouldn't _have any. Well, here goes nothing.

"Thanks," I said, grabbing one and putting it in my mouth. Well, didn't taste poisonous. And I was rather… explorative as a child in chemistry labs so I actually had tasted some poisons and had to be rushed to the hospital. Course I hadn't tasted all poisons and some had no taste so who knew what chemicals could be in this Turkish Delight? Or maybe you don't even need chemicals to poison people in this backwards world. Yikes. Next thing you know people are going to try to tell me that this world is flat or that creationism is – to use José's favorite word – legit. Ugh.

Anyways, I still made sure not to actually swallow. Not that one necessarily had to swallow poison to be poisoned.

"And you, Son of Adam?"

I spat out the Turkish Delight while her attention was distracted.

"Ricardo's my father, and no thanks. I'm… I'm not that into squishy foods like that."

She looked frustrated for a second and then tried, "Perhaps something to drink?"

"I don't suppose you have any aguas frescas?" José tried.

"Will you stop it with the Mexicanness?" I said.

"Figured it was better to keep with this stuff that she doesn't have," he muttered.

"Um… do you have…. Purple lemonade? Light that is. I'm on a diet," I said lamely.

The Witch look fairly frustrated. "How about some hot chocolate?"

"Lactose intolerant," José and I both said simultaneously. I know I was lying. No clue if he was.

"What does that mean?" she asked. "Never mind. How about some wine?"

"I don't drink alcohol," we both lied. Well, I presume it was a lie. I mean, who doesn't drink? The Witch irritably put her flask away. Huh. So she was planning on poisoning us.

"I wish to speak with you. You see, I am old and need heirs to someday rule Narnia," she began.

"I don't believe in nepotism," José said. Course he didn't. I felt like rolling my eyes.

"Well… that is why I would rather pick such clearly intelligent young humans like yourselves rather than any relative of mine," she covered smoothly.

"Is there taxation in Narnia?" José asked. I looked at him, wondering where in the world he was going with this.

"Of course," she said, equally confused.

"But if the people do not choose who their rulers are, then it's taxation without representation," he protested.

Oh. My. God. All he needed to do now was turn into a fricken bald eagle and start singing "God Bless America."

"What do you think this is, the United States?" I said sarcastically.

"You're anti-democracy?" he said, sounding shocked.

"No, but I'm not going to go crazy through coffee in a harbor," I said.

"It was tea! And that was in the 18th century!" he protested.

"Whatever. I don't actually care."

"I… What are you talking about?" the Witch said puzzled.

"Nothing," we both said a bit too innocently.

"Just like, thanks for the offer, but I'm really only interested in governments which make an effort to represent their people. Although I've yet to find a government which legit does a good job of representing _all_ people rather than just the people they decide they care about more," he said. "Perhaps we should… exchange contact information. I'd be interested in working with you, but certainly not as an heir."

"I just really don't give a… care about government. I'm a scientists so I'll just be going?" I said hopefully.

"Well, I… Son of Adam, come here. See right there? I live there. Come seek me. And… if you should find other humans while here, bring them too. After all, you will need a place to stay the night, will you not? So come, find me my dears."

"Of course!" José said.

"Yeah, sure," I said.

As soon as she left, I said, "Okay. That was creepy. I'm kinda surprised she left so easily."

"She probably expects we will return. And she wasn't so interested in us after finding out we weren't siblings and there weren't four of us."

"So the Pevensies are screwed," I commented.

"So we need to help them," José concluded.

I raised an eyebrow. "Not our problem. I'm more worried about sciencing ourselves back into our own time."

"That's not a real word."

"Sure it's a real word."

"Not."

"Is."

"Not."

"Is."

"Whatever. What's next? Any ideas for how we're 'sciencing' our way back? If not, I'm finding the Pevensies and warning them," he said, starting to take off.

"Um… you just said 'if not', and you're already taking off," I pointed out, rolling my eyes. Seriously.

"Because we both know you have no clue how to get back. I mean, there's no way everything here can be explained by science," he shrugged.

"Everything can be explained with science!" I protested, although I honestly was at a loss for how to explain most of this. Which only made me more determined to figure it out.

He raised an eyebrow and gestured around.

"Just because I haven't figured it out yet doesn't mean I can't!" I snapped.

"Whatever. Come or don't come. I don't care," he said shortly, turning and walking away. Pompous, annoying jerk.

I frowned, but I really didn't want to be in the middle of nowhere alone. I ran over to follow him as he took off. He suddenly stopped, staring at something in the distance.

"Now what?" I complained as I caught up.

"Okay… I'll accept fauns. I'll accept a land in a wardrobe wormhole or whatever. Maybe even accept time travel as weird as that was… But this is really taking it too far!"


End file.
